We can ignore parts of this paper– they have been retracted, as it seems some samples were contaminated in a rather curious (strategic?) manner. Which is fine, because what I want you, the audience, to focus on is Figure 2:

Specifically, Part C:

Lets zoom in on it, to get a nice, clear image. Actually, lets zoom in on the bottom part of that figure:

Not hard to interpret, right? Some cells from healthy donors do not express XMRV Gag protein, a couple CFS patients do express Gag protein, and a positive control does express Gag. It provides evidence to support the claim that CFS patients PBMC are infected with XMRV, and are capable of producing viral proteins.

Again, PBMC from normal individuals do not express XMRV Gag proteins… but this time, though the CFS patients did not initially express viral Gag proteins, when treated with an epigenetic modifier, they could induce Gag expression. Fairly straightforward explanation for why some patients might *appear* to be negative, but with a bit of lab trickery (we do this stuff all the time in labs), we can make a hiding virus come out and play.

How nice for us all, right? *wink*

Lets zoom in a bit:

And fiddle a bit with the brightness/contrast:

Science is all well and good– Two figures, one providing support of the claim that two patients, 1235 and 1236 are infected with XMRV, the other figure showing two patients, 2905 and 1674 might appear negative, but become positive after treatment with an epigenetic modifier. Neat, but so what?

Now, watch carefully or you will miss the trick, ladies and gentlemen!

Thats some mighty fine purple.

But how about an alternative view!!! I think Ive made my point, I just like how the far-right blob looks like a rubber ducky:

*BOOMANDHUGEPLUMEOFGREYSMOKE*

TAH DAH!

Two bits of data describing and explaining to two entirely different things… and yet I can make the two images look identical!

I AM MAGIC!!!

Am I magic…?

…or is this a case of arrogant, bold-faced, lazy-ass scientific fraud perpetrated by an apparent pathological liar?

You be the judges, ladies and gentlemen.

I know what my opinions are, but I would very much like to hear your thoughts.

* Though much of this magic trick is my own creation, the original idea was not mine. That individual/Those individuals do not wish to step forward at this time (and rightly so), but should they ever want to take credit for this observation, I will *happily* give it to them. Its wonderful, something I myself missed.

But to all you frauds out there– remember this: Dont. Fuck. With. Scientists. Individually, scientists are smart folks. And even smart folks get screwed over now and then. But together, we are always smarter than you.

A concern of many is whether or not the institute’s research into the pathophysiology of CFS will continue. The
answer is yes; however, the final decision as to who retains the institute’s grants is up to the NIH. Despite what you
may have heard from other sources, NIH research grants do not belong to a single investigator. Rather they belong
to the institution which provides the necessary support so that the research can be conducted by another qualified
principal investigator of the institution’s choice.

The news of Dr. Judy Mikovits’ recent departure may seem shocking because of the inappropriate, and untrue,
comments made by some people who are confused or purposely trying to mislead the public. Despite what you may
have heard or read on internet blogs, our commitment to neuro‐immune disease research has not diminished. We
have not closed our research program, ended our quest for the truth, or abandoned the institute’s grants. In fact,
our commitment is stronger than ever

Levi – I think I was saying pretty much the same thing as you. CBT in general is larger than the CBT for CFS used in the UK. I think CFS patients would not object as much to normal CBT and methods as opposed to CBT based on “abnormal illness beliefs”. What I know about CBT is not from CFS patients but from people I know who used it to treat depression and personality disorders. Then I also saw some similarities in coaches who use behavior change methods for healthy people. CBT is not like coaching but some “coaches” who help people change behavior and thought processes use methods similar to those found in CBT.

“This paper actually support the hypothesis that human gammaretroviruses are infecting people with ME/cfs.

MLVs also infect B cells. By killing B cells you will be reducing the viral titre.

The XMRV portion of the study is invalidated as they optimised their assays to VP62/XMRV, which does not exist in nature.

Primers and conditions optimised to detect the VP62 clone in vitro is not capable of detecting the human MLV-related gammaretroviruses detected in people with ME. They could have used a 1000 assays like this and it would make no difference.”

Yeah, some wierd reactions to this paper, some saying of course its not a cure, probably just a way to help ‘big pharma’ clear shelves or something.

There is sort of a way in for speculation, since there are possible associations with lyphmomas leukemias and virus infections – as everyone is quick to point out – but its all speculative of course, so there is no reason at all to jump onto HGRV infection of B-cells. No one mentions EBV, that may be associated with Hodgkins Lymphoma, ‘cos Mono – quite a common pre-cursor to CFS – is not as exciting as the new lab created escapees that are deparately being covered up!

That or that idiot v99. The authors actually did a PCR assay for a conserved region of MLVs, so much more that VP62 should be picked up. Contrary to what idiots like Gerwyn and v99 seem to think, PCR is not a hugely complex thing to do. In fact, it’s downright easy if you know what you’re doing…and they don’t =\

I have been patiently waiting for the editors of Science to make a decision about the Lombardi et al paper. I,m also expecting that they will have the courage to fully retract a paper that contains misrepresentations that the authors themselves admitted.
In the mean time, a family of spiders have made themselves at home in my keyboard.

“When the full history of ME/CFS is written one day, we will all be ashamed of ourselves” Prof. Dr. Ola Didrik Saugstad, Professor of Pediatrics, WHO Advisor, Norway

“Hopefully, one day, my dream is that our medical community will produce a formal apology to the patients for not having believed them all these years that they were facing a real illness.” Jose Montoya, M.D. Stanford University

News from Norway: Cancer drug Rituximab alleviates Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. In other news the cancer drug Alemtuzumab is more effective than interferons in the treatment of MS, a neuroimmune disease similar to ME.

Yes its true that XMRV-VP62 is over but the continuing research on polytropic gammaretroviruses as found by Lombardi et al and confirmed by Lo et al is far from over ladies and gentlemen.

“The average chronic fatigue syndrome patient on the day they were tested had between 30-50 viruses; the average healthy control patient had 3 or 4.” Dr. Daniel Peterson, 2008 Swedish Conference.”

30-50 viruses plus the bacterial, fungal, and mycoplasma infections found in ME patients and confirmed polytropic retroviruses is why the retroviral research continues. Like AIDS it is the retrovirus plus the co-infection that determines disease outcomes.

euro-me.org/news-Q42011-003.htm?forumid=331851
Quote: A statement from the Norwegian Directorate of Health has been received where they apologise for not having provided the necessary and proper health services to persons with ME.

“I think that we have not cared for people with ME to a great enough extent. I think it is correct to say that we have not established proper health care services for these people, and I regret that.”

I have a few other papers that they should try to get retracted, starting with the Temin and Baltimore papers that reported the presence of reverse transcriptase…they clearly failed to exactly replicate conditions from previous studies that established the central dogma of biology…

I have a few other papers that they should try to get retracted, starting with the Temin and Baltimore papers that reported the presence of reverse transcriptase…they clearly failed to exactly replicate conditions from previous studies that established the central dogma of biology…

The logic of people like V99 is probably that the term “retro” in “Retroviruses” indicates that they do NOT use reverse transcriptase at all. It is a mistake and all papers about the pol gene must now be “retracted”! Maybe these viruses should be called “V99-clonal expansion viruses”. Virology has to be rewritten…by V99…

No, no, no. Retro is a description of virus culture – having come out of their disco era (since that’s where their hosts were living for years), they’ve hit techno, ‘discovered’ Depeche Mode and partying like it’s 1999.

I’m sure at some point, Abbie will give us a post(modern?) on the hippoviruses – the ones too cool for proteins because it’s just too much in the mainstream. Poseur viruses, pseudo one might call them.

Hippoviruses are still better than those damn hippiviruses. They can’t afford to use reverse transcriptase b/c they won’t get off their lazy asses and get a job. All they do is sit around and smoke hemp.

Judy Mikovits, who has been in the spotlight for the past 2 years after Science published a controversial report by her group that tied a novel mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), is now behind bars.

Sheriffs in Ventura County, California, arrested Mikovits yesterday on felony charges that she is a fugitive from justice. She is being held at the Todd Road Jail in Santa Paula without bail. But ScienceInsider could obtain only sketchy details about the specific charges against her.

The Ventura County sheriff’s office told ScienceInsider that it had no available details about the charges and was acting upon a warrant issued by Washoe County in Nevada. A spokesperson for the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office told ScienceInsider that it did not issue the warrant, nor did the Reno or Sparks police department. He said it could be from one of several federal agencies in Washoe County.

Lois Hart, one of Mikovits’s attorneys, says her client is being held for extradition to Reno, Nevada, in relation to a civil lawsuit against her filed by the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI). Mikovits worked as the research director at WPI, a nonprofit in Reno, for 2 years until she was fired by its president, Annette Whittemore, on 29 September. On 4 November, WPI filed suit against Mikovits, alleging that she had wrongfully kept her laboratory notebooks and other information about her work for the fledgling institute on her laptop, in flash drives, and in a personal e-mail account. A preliminary injunction in the case is set to be held by Nevada’s Second District Judicial Court on 22 November. On that same day, Mikovits has a hearing in Ventura County, California, where she can contest extradition, Hart says. . . .

yes you are right, the author of the accompanying Commentary in the Lancet which stated that a SF-36 score of 60 fulfilled part of a ‘strict criterion of recovery’, published a paper in 2010 in which he wrote that “A cut-off of (less than or equal to)65 was considered to reflect severe problems with physical functioning.” How a score that is 5 points lower than one which ‘reflects severe problems with physical functioning’ (on a scale where higher scores mean better physical function) all of the sudden becomes part of a ‘strict criterion for recovery’ is anyone’s guess.

The IMEA quotes a “Seth Roberts” from the July 1990 edition of “Spy Magazine”. Oh my.

From a very quick look (unfortunately, compared with the history of XMRV, I know very little about the history of HIV) it would have been better to cite “The origin of HIV-1 isolate HTLV-IIIB” (Chang et al. 1993). And then ask the same question (which is a fair question, IMHO). And see that Lombardi et al. 2009 did a “little” “more” than Gallo.

The “investigation” that Science did into Lombardi et al. uncovered only a part of the falsifications/fabrications that the WPI did and didn’t address the findings by the NCI lab. Science found enough to justify a retraction, but I don’t see they were interested in finding out just how wrong this turd from the WPI was. We need a proper investigation.

Oh, this is good: The Seth Roberts of the Spy Magazine on Gallo article (and of self-experimenting fame) is a professor of psychology. The IMEA cite a professor of psychology on the matter of retrovirology. My irony meter, broken it is.